Venus and Adonis

1933. SHAKESPEARE, William. Venus and Adonis. 8vo, bound in gilt-stamped three-quarter red morocco. London: The Nonesuch Press, 1933. The entire poem Venus and Adonis extracted from perhaps the most satisfying edition ever printed. T.E. Lawrence describes his admiration in a glowing letter to the publishers: "We turn over to the Nonesuch Shakespeare. There you have created a most marvellus pleasure. I have handled it ever so many times, and read The Tempest right through. It satisfies. It is final, like the Kelmscott Chaucer or the Ashendene Virgil. And it is a book which charms one to read slowly, an art which is almost gone from us in these times. Every word which Shakespeare uses stands out glowing. A really great edition. The tact and grace of your editor have been surpassing. I think I like the size and shape and binding almost as much as the text. The paper, too, is just right. Altogether a triumph. One of the best things is that it can not be done again. Nobody will ever dare to produce the old type of edition now, while your text stands there to reproach them. It means a permanent improvement in Shakespeares" (letter to David Garnett, quoted in The Nonesuch Century, p. 47). Dreyfus 58. Ransom, p. 169. The Nonesuch Century 58.